Wii is a hit with friends and family

The Mii Gallery on our Wii already has ten people in it. Last night the Wii burned a lot of (our) calories!

Wii Sports is so much fun. I think Bowling is probably the best game, and Boxing the worst. Golf is really fun and well done, Baseball is insanely difficult, and Tennis is a little too simplistic for my tastes but it's still lots of fun. Boxing had us literally sweating. This game will be a great weight-loss plan for someone. :-)

We also played lots of Rayman Raving Rabbids. I bought this for the kids, but ummm, not so much a kids game. That said, score one more wicked party game for the adults! :-) It's hilarious, trust me, it's a good thing nobody was drinking while playing or there would be liquid spewed all over the carpet. This game is basically a bunch of mini-games, and they're really fun. Some of them require serious phyiscal exertion though, people were taking off unnecessary layers of clothing to keep cool while playing. If the comedy of the game isn't enough to get you laughing and having a good time, watching your friends faces go red trying to get a high score definitely will. :-)

I briefly saw Trauma Center, Shane bought it and we tried it out just to see what it's like. Looks very cool.

I also only very briefly tried Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, being a 1 player game it wasn't a priority for yesterday's activities. I'll need a strategy guide. :-)

I played Red Steel for an hour or so before friends arrived. It's pretty good, but it takes time to get used to the idea of using gestures for things I'm so used to doing with sticks and buttons. The sword-fighting is really cool too, but damn my arm and shoulder were sore after a bunch of fights. I think this is the first game I've ever seen Xavier get genuinely scared by. He wanted me to stop playing. Yikes, it'll have to be a late night game for sure.

I haven't played Call of Duty 3 yet. Another 1 player game, it wasn't on tap for last night.

Unfortunately I haven't been able to get the Wii online yet. I've read on forums that Nintendo's servers are overloaded right now, so it's hard to tell (because of really poor error message information on the Wii) whether it's having problems with the wireless connection or the connection to Nintendo's servers. I'll be patient, it's probably the latter. That said, I really want to try the Virtual Console. :-(

The Photo channel is amazing. I put my SD card into the Wii from my camera and it did an awesome job of displaying our pictures, and even the uncompressed 30fps 640x480 AVI videos the camera took worked immediately, with sound. All the Wii needs now is a way to connect to my shared iPhoto library or a way to read photos/videos off an external hard drive.

The controllers are truly amazing devices. They're way smaller and lighter than I expected them to be. I guess that's good but I've always felt that light plastics = cheaply made, so hopefully I'm wrong. They're not cheap.

Bottom line for day one, the Wii truly is a Revolution. Gaming will never be the same again.

Thank you Nintendo!

Written on November 20, 2006